Oh geez, this is embarrassing. I’m not entirely sure how to even talk about this. It’s not what you’d call “a fun topic,” but alright, here I’m being asked to share my experience so that’s what I’m doing — sharing.

I got a tattoo. On my body. I went — I walked, specifically — on purpose to get some ink injected into my skin forever — branding me, like a cow or something — for everyone in the world to see.

Ewww.

We should go back to the beginning, when I first stumbled into this life-changing future regret. I guess it started, like most bad decisions, while out at brunch with a friend.

Sitting across the table, my friend, chewing something stupid, says, “You should get tattoo.”

“Huh?” I reply.

“You should,” asserts the friend, still chewing loudly, kind of rude.

“I should what? I didn’t hear you.”

“Get a tattoo,” this person again. Relentless. “Oh.”

And so it was. Peer pressured into having indelible scrawl stabbed into my body, the only body I’ll ever get. And I have to live with it every day as a reminder of things. What things I’m not sure exactly, but they’re bad things that have to do with bad decisions that led me to this point, where I am now “betatt-ed,” like a common street hooligan.

Actually, it’s worse. If the association with ruffians was the only issue, that would be alright. No, tattoos are so ubiquitous they’ve lost even any underworld edge, any “street” cache I could have hoped it would lend me. Grandparents and soccer moms alike are sporting these things: ankles with Tweety Bird, shoulders suddenly the home of butterflies and for the love of all that is holy, koi fish. These are sketchbook doodles lobbed onto a body.

This “tattoo,” sits along my arm in a softly meandering line toward my palm. It reads, “Quia amore langueo,” which is Latin for “Terrible mistake.”